Profile: Manos: Hands of Fate

Today, I share with you one of my favorite movies. Unlike many enjoyable movies, nothing about Manos: Hands of Fate is good. I can critique it, since I have made several of my own cheesy movies. 

Just start with the title. If you are bilingual in Spanish and English, you know that the tile is really Hands: The Hands of Fate.


The story of its production is something that I couldn’t make up. Hal Warren, the filmmaker, was a fertilizer salesman. Somehow, he met Stirling Silliphant, the screenwriter of In The Heat of the Night. He thought it was a great film, but he bet Silliphant that he could make his own movie for less money… much less money.


He wrote the script himself and hired local theater performers to be the stars. He saved the coveted role of “Mike” for himself. 

To create the scary atmosphere of the film, many of the outdoor scenes were filmed at night. In order to see the action, he had to rent huge lights. The downside to these lights is that many bugs were attracted to them and the lights were so close to the camera that most of the nighttime scenes had bugs flying in and out of the shot. But I guess this was appropriate for the satanic, lord of the flies, cult feeling that Warren was going for.

The film’s opening sequence is breathtaking--in the form of a yawn. It appears that the scenes of driving were meant to be a backdrop to the title sequence, but after “Manos: The Hands of Fate” appears, there are no other words that appear. Just endless scenes of the people in the car (who we don’t know yet) driving around while sexy saxophone music plays. I would say it is about 10 minutes into the movie that we hear the first dialogue and the characters admit that they are lost, so they sing Row Your Boat to pass the time. After passing a whole bunch of signs that tell them where various destinations are, they decide the best course of action is to stop at a rundown shack.

For fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that first saw Manos on that show (like me), this is when the movie really starts, with the introduction of Torgo. His name does work in the canon of evil sidekick names like Lobo, Igor, and Mongo. But he could also fit in with Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx. I have read that it was Warren’s intention that Torgo be only part human and maybe part goat?? Supposedly someone designed this contraption that would make it look like Torgo’s knees bent from the back. However, the actor playing Torgo wore the contraption backwards so instead, Torgo just appears to have massive knees and needs a staff to avoid falling over.

After the lost family asks for directions and gets nowhere with Torgo, our hero Mike seems determined to spend the night at the rundown shack. Now, I have watched this movie more times than I probably should have, but I still can’t figure out why Mike is so anxious to stay there. Torgo has to think it over, because after all “The Master wouldn’t approve” (who is The Master??). Torgo thinks for what seems like an eternity and decides they can stay there and he even carries their bags into the house. At this point, the viewer hears for the first time “The Torgo Theme” a repetitive motif that may be the least threatening villain theme of all time. 

I may not have made it clear yet, that more or less this movie plays out in real time. Once they enter the house, the family passes the time trying to make conversation with Torgo and admiring the minimalist decor. Finally, some action happens when Debbie wanders off and they have to search all two or three rooms of the house to find her and then the car won’t start! It’s once Mike goes to fix the car that the wife’s affair with Torgo begins.  Kidding!!

After Mike leaves, Torgo and the wife just stare at each other. Torgo says some awkward things. I believe Warren was going for some type of assault, but Torgo flicks the lady’s hair and that’s it, so she slaps him and calls him a beast. Later on that night, we learn that Torgo has many women on his mind and goes to the evil cult altar where there are like 8 or 9 women in nightgowns in some sort of spell/sleep/trance type thing. He helps himself to tickle the arm of one of the women before going back to the shack to peep on the wife in the bedroom (twice!).

Just when things couldn’t get any worse, The Master wakes up and demands that the family be sacrificed to their god, Manos. All of the captive women (which turn out to be the Master’s wives) wake up and get into an argument about what to do with the family, which turns out into a big all-out brawl. As they fight, The Master finds Torgo asleep in the shack and tells Torgo that he may no longer require Torgo’s services as… whatever the heck Torgo does.

The Master breaks up the fight and tells the women they must kill Torgo. Their first attempt at an aggressive massage doesn’t seem to do the job. So the Master takes matters into his hand and takes Torgo by the hand. He touches Torgo’s hand to one of the logs in the campfire and through an abrupt cut, there’s a pretend explosion and Torgo runs away.

In the end, the family cannot escape The Master and Mike becomes Torgo’s replacement, while his wife and daughter join the Master’s wives (yuck). But honestly, once Torgo is out of the movie, so is the real drama.

When the movie was finished, either something went wrong with the sound that was recorded or no sound had been recorded, as much of the dialogue had to be dubbed in postproduction. For bigger budgets, this usually isn’t an issue, but not every performer was available for the dub. The best example of this is near the beginning when Mike gets pulled over for speeding. Warren had to dub the voice of Mike and the police officer, so he is literally talking to himself.

Warren went all out for the premiere in his local town. He rented out a theater and a search light for out front. He even rented a limo for the actors, but only wanted to pay for one limo so it would drop off one actor and then drive around the corner to pick up another actor.

According to what I have read, the premiere was a disaster. Pretty near the beginning, the audience started laughing, which continued the entire time and eventually the cast crawled on their hands and knees to escape the theater. Warren did have good instincts when he admitted that he could simply rebrand the movie as a comedy and have a hit. Unfortunately, the film did not find a large audience until Mystery Science Theater in the 1990s. Many people today enjoy the film and appreciate Warren’s work, even if his first intention was not to make a comedy.